Google to bring Skynet to iPhone in voice recognition update

Have none of the engineers employed by companies like Google ever had enough time off to watch the Terminator trilogy? Companies may have the best of intentions when building artificial intelligence systems that assist with vocal queries from, say, an iPhone, but the rest of us know how this is going to end. Regardless of our impending doom, Google is set to announce an update to its search application that brings these very features to an iPhone near you.

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

Snarky, half-dead film references aside, the New York Times brings news that Google is preparing to bring "sophisticated voice recognition technology" to its overlooked (and highly underrated, in my opinion) Google Mobile App for iPhone (iTunes link). Google says users can ask "virtually any question," such as "Where is the nearest Starbucks?" or "How tall is Mount Everest?" Users will also be able to query contacts in the iPhone's address book, a feature that should strike off one of the iPhone's most significant complaints since its introduction. (It's curious that Google would bring this functionality to the iPhone before Apple, but we digress.)

Don't worry, though, your iPhone will not be a direct vehicle for our destruction (oops, I did it again). Queries will be sent to Google's servers, which will perform all the heavy lifting of translation and analysis. Search results will be displayed on the iPhone after a short period of time (no, it won't talk back to you—yet), and the iPhone's GPS capabilities will be harnessed to provide location-based search results when available and required.

When you boil it all down, this feature is all about making search convenient for users, but also "dramatically increasing value to the advertiser through location and voice," Vic Gundotra, the head of Google's mobile business and a former Microsoft executive, told the New York Times.

Of course, the iPhone is certainly not the first phone to gain voice-assisted search features, and Google has offered similar features for all phones via other methods like downloadable applications and even basic SMS queries. Interestingly, though, Google is bringing voice recognition to the iPhone before the T-Mobile G1, the first publicly available phone to use Google's Android open source OS.

Google's updated iPhone application could arrive as early as today, though we're all familiar with how consistent Apple's approval process is. Still, when it does arrive, Google's Mobile App for iPhone will remain at the wallet-friendly price of free.